If the status quo continues, there will be no major adjustment to the ongoing destruction of the planet.

Yes, there will continue to be major talk, talk, and more talk. But little action. We will ride the bus right over the edge of the cliff, talking all the way to crunch time. And if there are any survivors, they’ll still be talking.

Because that’s who we are as a species. We solve small and medium-sized problems, and we talk, talk, talk, about solving large problems — but never succeed.

And it may well end in the demise of our civilization. If not from the climate, then from something else.

The Cost of Climate Action vs. Climate Inaction

Meanwhile, some very dedicated people (Hi! Christiana Figueres, et al) are working on it and have proposed very workable solutions (which for the most part are being ignored) none of it requires any technology or economic models that we don’t already have.

We have it all, except the will to act!

From: ‘On Care for Our Common Home’ — the encyclical written by Pope Francis.

“Humanity has entered a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads.

“We are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and, more recently, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies.

“It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and technology are wonderful products of God-given human creativity.”

“Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it.

“We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint.” — Encyclical by Pope Francis 2015

Taking all of the above into account, we have the wherewithal to solve the problem, just not the will to act. Therefore, we will fail. It is inevitable. Unless we change the nature of the problem

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller

One way to do that, is to get rid of all fossil fuel subisidies, which hit $583 billion dollars last year. (That’s over $1 trillion dollars of subsidy every 2 years)

That’s the direct subsidy… the externality subsidy might be as high as $2 trillion dollars per year globally for fossil fuels.

On the externality subsidy… according to a highly-regarded Harvard study the burning of coal in the United States causes $500 billion of health, crop, and infrastructure damage annually, within the U.S.A. alone. That’s just coal.

A better way, is by matching fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy subsidies based on energy output — for example, by Barrel of Oil Equivalent (BOE)

In that way, a level playing field will allow renewable energy to flourish in regions where it is viable and it would receive the same level of subsidies that fossil fuels are already receiving — and have received every year since the 1930’s.

A third way, although likely to be unpopular would be the most effective; Using the ‘command and control’ model — where each nation legislates that coal burning is thenceforth illegal (that would solve the largest part of the atmospheric pollution problem right there) and that half of all new cars sold in each country must be electric (EV) or hydrogen fueled vehicles

We all ‘get’ that manufacturing electric vehicles causes some amount of pollution at the time of manufacture (just like any car manufacturing process) but it is the daily exhaust fumes from millions of cars that pollute the air, which is orders of magnitude greater than the amount of pollution generated by the initial manufacture of any car, whether electric or gasoline powered.

My entire case rests on this; If we continue bumbling along the status quo path, we won’t ever properly address the problem.

We need to; ‘build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.’ Just like Buckminster Fuller said.